Miu Miu / Fall 2014 RTW

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For a woman spectator, there’s a difference—an ever-widening gulf, actually—between observing and appreciating fashion as part of the far-off arts-and-entertainment industry, and actively needing the damn stuff. Thus it’s no dis on Miuccia Prada to laud her for putting fashionable rain boots and extra-big raincoats into her Miu Miu collection. Both are what the foot-sore, weather-weary women of the editorial–slash–store buyer–slash–worker corps have wished they’d had to wear as they’ve tramped through the fall shows. Ditto all the kids who’ve been standing at bus stops and traveling on subways, enduring the never-ending winter of 2014.

Put it this way: Is there anything wrong with being populist, practical, and fun in fashion? Should a brainy intellectual such as Mrs. Prada not be concerning herself with commercial clothes that reflect the cheapy-flashy, colorful clothes schoolgirls are wearing on the streets (in non-uptown areas) of London, New York, and Paris? Baby-pastel, “bad-taste” anoraks, glittery things, short plastic skirts and all? It would surely be an indictment on a whole system to say so.

Anyway, let’s just say that Miuccia Prada broadcasts on all channels with Miu Miu. She had the Best Supportings of the Academy Awards (Lupita Nyong’o and Jared Leto) facing each other across the runway (shame they had to wait, today with ordinary mortals, for the far bigger star of hip-hop, Rihanna, to make her entrance, but apparently that’s the way the totem pole of entertainment stacks these days). On the other hand, it can be detrimental to fashion designers to allow the content of their work to be overridden by photos, selfies, and all the kerfuffle of “who’s in the front row?” Kudos to Mrs. P that she can enable all that, but dodge it at the same time. It’s to be hoped she didn’t have a convoluted art reference up her sleeve to explain the frankly girl-friendly contents of her show (ahh, the pointy, weird, screwy-heeled shoes!), either. Too much has gotten in the way of fashion’s ability to talk directly to female wants and needs. Artists and gallerists, actors and actresses, pop stars and athletes can all take care of themselves. It’s fashion that needs to skip free of all that—happy, smart, and relevant. Ok, Mrs. Prada, you did it.